+rubai Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 (edited) On the 1st of March 2012 I went through all the country and state, territory, subdivision, etc. pages available on the advanced search page and counted all the geocaches that had been published and available at the time (excluding future events) to produced some interesting statistics. Total Geocaches: 1,652,053 Countries with the most geocaches Countries with the highest geocache densities States with the most geocaches Sates with the highest geocache densities Canada USA EDIT: The geocache count for Nebraska should actually be around 6400, which gives a density of around 31.9 geocaches/1000km². (Thanks BruceS) Some links with more numbers and figures Some more figures List of states with statistics List of countries with statistics Interactive world map Edited May 3, 2012 by rubai Quote Link to comment
+Mr. Wilson & a Mt. Goat Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 That's so cool! Thanks for posting this! The size of Ontario is off though. Quote Link to comment
+The A-Team Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 The size of Ontario is off though. I think he has used the land areas, rather than the total areas. 917,741 is what Wikipedia reports as the land area of Ontario. The number of caches that are hidden in or under water is negligible anyway. Most caches are on land or islands. Quote Link to comment
+StarBrand Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 As a long term Nebraska Geocacher - I'll protest our bad data..... ok got that out of my system. Quote Link to comment
+Mr. Wilson & a Mt. Goat Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 The size of Ontario is off though. I think he has used the land areas, rather than the total areas. 917,741 is what Wikipedia reports as the land area of Ontario. The number of caches that are hidden in or under water is negligible anyway. Most caches are on land or islands. That makes sense, although there is the occasional one in or under the water. Quote Link to comment
+jellis Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 (edited) Thank you for the stats. That's really great I knew California had a lot but not the most. Even with being a big state we do have a lot of National Parks. But I am sure the most density maybe either the Central Valley or Southern Cal. I lean toward SoCal. Update edit: I mean for the US Edited May 3, 2012 by jellis Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 Nicely done. I've did some similar data collection a couple of years ago which is now, of course, out of date. I was more interested in looking at countries/states which had the fewest (in many cases zero) number of caches and lowest density. I don't know what kind of programming skill you have but have you considered turning this into a web application using the geocaching API? I've had thought about doing that. Using the Geocaching API I could periodically grab the data, turn it into Linked Data (RDF) and then do some mashups with other available linked data (such as population data). It could produce some interesting thematic maps and even have a search interface so one could select a city and get the relative cache density of an area for someone looking for a place to travel and find a lot of caches. With the RDF capabilities of Drupal (an open source content management system) one could fairly easily make some of these geocaching statistics available as linked open data, reusable by other applications. Quote Link to comment
+rubai Posted May 3, 2012 Author Share Posted May 3, 2012 (edited) Nicely done. I've did some similar data collection a couple of years ago which is now, of course, out of date. I was more interested in looking at countries/states which had the fewest (in many cases zero) number of caches and lowest density. I don't know what kind of programming skill you have but have you considered turning this into a web application using the geocaching API? I've had thought about doing that. Using the Geocaching API I could periodically grab the data, turn it into Linked Data (RDF) and then do some mashups with other available linked data (such as population data). It could produce some interesting thematic maps and even have a search interface so one could select a city and get the relative cache density of an area for someone looking for a place to travel and find a lot of caches. With the RDF capabilities of Drupal (an open source content management system) one could fairly easily make some of these geocaching statistics available as linked open data, reusable by other applications. This is something I'm actually interesting in doing and have some ideas of what I could do with access to the API, but I'm not really sure where to start. Edited May 3, 2012 by rubai Quote Link to comment
Mr.Yuck Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 As a long term Nebraska Geocacher - I'll protest our bad data..... ok got that out of my system. Considering you own 164 yourself, yeah, I'd say it's a little off. It's been corrected of course. Quote Link to comment
+Phizy Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 It may be interesting to see the cache saturation value as well because there is a limit of caches allowed. For example US would be 0.2117 % saturated, Germany is 1.682 %, Monoco is 27.1 %, Australia is 0.012 % Eh...maybe a useless figure..... Quote Link to comment
+Glenn Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 Countries with the highest geocache densities Wow! You've gotta show me how you managed to successfully divide by zero when you figured the cache density for the Vatican City. Quote Link to comment
+fuzziebear3 Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 Countries with the highest geocache densities Wow! You've gotta show me how you managed to successfully divide by zero when you figured the cache density for the Vatican City. I'm guessing 0 is a rounded number, there must be some area, even if it is less than one. This is all quite interesting -- I wonder how it corresponds with population density in the area? I'm guessing that with the proliferation of urban micros, that urban areas actually represent a high density, while less populous areas are much lower. For example, consider DC (small land area, high population density) and Alaska (large land mass, low population density). Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 Countries with the highest geocache densities Wow! You've gotta show me how you managed to successfully divide by zero when you figured the cache density for the Vatican City. I also noticed that there are two caches listed for Vatican City. There *used* to be two traditional caches at the Vatican (I've found both of them) but one is now archived. Currently the sites lists 1 traditional and two puzzle/mystery caches. Quote Link to comment
+UMainah Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 (edited) Hmm, Since when is Nova Scotia smaller than PEI? Typo, it should be 53,338sq km and not 5,338sq km Edited May 3, 2012 by UMainah Quote Link to comment
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